"War of the Worlds" 1953 is one of my all time favorite movies, and the 2005 version is not too shabby either. Many of you who, may or may not follow my flickr photo stream, (if you don't you should) will know is that one of my projects is photographing toys in an appropriate environment. So for my latest photographic endeavor I decided to build some "War of the Worlds" models and photograph them in and around iconic Dallas locations, another of my favorite subjects. So what if the Martian war machines rolled through our city......

These models were photographed in situ, at the time of capture, that is to say at the same time as the locations, it is a forced perspective trick that has been in use for many many years. This was a factor that I was unwilling to compromise on. This way the light is correct, thats the single most important thing for work like this.

A fair number of people who have seen these, asked where I got the images of the war machines, suspecting that I found them on the web and just photoshopped them in to existing pictures or built and rendered them in a 3D application, like Maya or Softimage. Nope.

I shot two sometimes three images, one for the Model in place on a stand and then move the model out of the shot and shoot a "clean" BG plate, and occasionally shoot a smaller model or move the model and shoot that as well. Once I had the images I removed whatever was holding the model via photoshop and using the "clean" BG plate to aid in cleanup then add smoke, fire, debris etc. I wanted a considered approach. I wanted to travel around a look through the lens and see the model in the frame, at the location and see if it told a story or had impact, not to mention just basic line up. This was for me a much more fun way to do this. I have made prints of these 18"x24" and hope to do something interesting with them soon. If your interested in a print let me know. lyn.caudle@gmail.com

Above I said I hoped to do something with these images soon, well soon is now, I have 4 of the 18"x24" prints in the summer salon show at Kettle Art, in the heart of Deep Ellum for the next few weeks, the rest of the series of larger prints are currently at the Get Reel Goods store on Elm in Deep Ellum. I also have smaller 8"x10" ish prints available at Makers Connect in East Dallas. So send all your Sci FI Dallas Art loving friends and family to these places and check it all out.

War of the Worlds Dallas - On Flickr

Below are a couple of progressions as an example of how these came together.